Sullivan's Law Read Free Page A

Brad.”
    â€œWhen I heard it was your case,” he said, pacing around the room, “I didn’t think there was going to be a problem.” He shook his hands to release the tension. “Get everything you have on Downly to the PD. Don’t answer your phone, and don’t leave the building until we figure out what we’re going to tell the press.”
    Carolyn pushed herself to her feet, then stood with her arms limp at her side. “There’s nothing to figure out,” she said. “As soon as I hand over Downly’s file, they’ll know I let the case fall dormant. Even if the brass decides to fire me, I refuse to falsify information.”
    Brad pointed at his chest, even more agitated than before. “Did I ask you to falsify information? Are you trying to blackmail me?”
    Carolyn fell silent, linking eyes with him. They’d been lovers until Brad’s promotion six months ago. The affair had been doomed from the onset. He was thirty-nine and had never been married. A decent man in most respects, Brad had a wild streak, probably what made him so irresistible to women. He raced cars in his spare time, liked to hang out and drink with the guys, and his temper was notorious. Carolyn could never understand how he maintained a perfect physique and didn’t look a day over thirty. Good genes, she told herself, thinking his lifestyle would eventually catch up to him.
    â€œI don’t want a repeat of the Cully case,” she told him. “It blew up in our faces, remember?”
    The situation with Jerry Cully had been similar, yet far more serious. Cully had been placed on probation for indecent exposure. In most instances, men who exposed themselves were not sexual predators. The nature of their crimes was passive. They tended to be introverted, almost pathetic individuals who weren’t known to commit acts of violence. Jerry Cully had been an exception. He’d raped a student the previous year on the same campus where Carolyn attended law school, a few months before Brad had been promoted. His probation officer, Dick Stanton, had been counting the days until his retirement. Unlike Carolyn, who had supervised Eddie Downly diligently for over three years before falling lax, Cully’s probation officer had only seen him on one occasion.
    When the rape occurred, Stanton had doctored the files so it appeared that he’d been routinely monitoring the man’s activities. As it turned out, Cully had been a serial rapist. Dick Stanton had unknowingly provided his probationer with an alibi for one of his crimes. Stanton had come forth with the truth, then turned in his resignation. During the time he and Carolyn had been seeing each other, Brad had confessed that he was the one who’d encouraged Stanton to alter the files. He knew what he’d done was wrong, yet he’d defended his position as protecting not only his fellow probation officer, but the reputation of the entire agency. Carolyn wanted to make sure he wouldn’t ask the same thing of her.
    â€œTo expedite things,” Brad told her, “bring the file and let Rachel copy it and get it to Hank Sawyer at the PD. If there’s anything you left out, e-mail it to Hank later. I’ll call the boss while you’re gone and deliver the bad news. I have another case I want you to handle.”
    â€œWhat do you think?” Carolyn asked, worried that she could lose her job once the truth came out regarding Downly.
    Brad Preston reached across his desk for the phone. “Do what I said,” he told her, gesturing with his free hand. “The sooner they catch Downly, the quicker things will die down.”
    At nine-forty-five, Carolyn handed Rachel the thick file on Eddie Downly. Before she returned to Brad’s office, she darted into the ladies’ room, then burst into tears. Opening her purse, she removed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. She tried to tell herself that even